


A Thousand Times Before My Death

by asuralucier



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: Best Friends, Guilt and Healing, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Shakespeare Quotations, Sharing a Bed, Some Discussion of Canon Relevant Suicidal Ideation, big damn kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21865750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Oliver finds James, or at least, a part of him. They can make up the rest, can't they?
Relationships: James Farrow/Oliver Marks
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Thousand Times Before My Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alasse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alasse/gifts).



Before Alexander told me about the existence of Gloucester, Massachusetts and why I ought to care, its existence was nominal to me, like any other proper noun: I knew Gloucester as a type of cheese, a character in _King Lear_ , a town in the Southwest of England, near the Cotswolds, where unbelievably wealthy people had summer homes. Wren and Richard used to holiday there (the Cotswolds, not Gloucester) and once they’d invited us at the end of our third year, on a whim.

Nobody had gone. I knew why I didn’t (couldn’t afford it), but for everybody else, who knew? 

“Yeah,” Alexander said. “Kind of like that. Busy during the summer. A fucking tomb during the winter. I’ve been once.” 

“And that’s where he is?” I pressed. “Do you promise me that’s where he is?” 

Alexander still lived in Philadelphia. He grew marijuana in his basement and worked as a theatre director. His place, a small house on a cul-de-sac, was unbelievably home-y, dedicated to creature comforts I had a hard time associating with him. At least he still looked like a vampire when he smiled. He was going to age well. I could think that, because it wasn’t the same thing as thinking he was attractive. 

“Oliver, he has a name. He’s not a ghost and he isn’t dead. I mean.” 

“Don’t fucking joking about that,” I scowled. The letter, James’s letter, with the quote from _Pericles_ still burned a hole in my pocket most days. I had it with me now, the edges smooth and flat, rubbing against my skin through my clothes. I didn’t know where I would be without it. 

Alexander looked at me levelly. “Say his name.” 

“James,” I said, in a rush, as if all the air in the room had gone, and I was racing to catch up. It was only one syllable, but it left me winded, as if I’d spent the last hour onstage stumbling over an overlong monologue. “Tell me that James Nicholas Farrow lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts. If you dick me around, Alexander, so help me. I’ll.” 

“...Kill you?” Alexander finished for me. He was holding a knife, and slicing an apple in jagged, uneven chunks. He popped one of the chunks into his mouth and chewed with his mouth open.

“Don’t fucking joke about that either.” I left Alexander in the kitchen and trampled up to his spare bedroom, that was slowly becoming some sort of study, or hermit’s dwelling. Of course, Alexander denied this from the get-go. For the past three nights, I’d slept on a single mattress next to some haphazardly DIY-ed shelves. 

It was a little comforting, I thought, knowing that Arden Shakespeare might fall on my head and really kill me while I slept. 

_To die, to sleep.  
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,  
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come  
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,  
Must give us pause._

I made short work of packing up my things. If nothing else, prison had taught me the merits of living sparse. No friends. No possessions. The language of the Bard, forever stuck in my head was everything that I could need.

To that end, I didn’t think Alexander and I were friends. At Dellecher, if push came to shove, I’d describe us as two distantly-related cousins who were always shoved next to each other during Thanksgiving and/or Christmas until we gave up and played at getting along. 

Good thing we both went to acting school. 

Alexander was still in the kitchen. The apple was gone, and he was standing in front of his blacktop counter, knife in hand, seemingly staring off into space.

I was about to raise my voice, tell him I was there, to put down the knife. But then Alexander beat me to it. 

“Leaving?” 

“Sorry to impose,” I said. “Yeah.” 

“Want some weed?” 

I stared at him, until he walked to where I was, at the mouth of his kitchen. “You serious?” I had a parole officer. Had being a bit of an operative word. After speaking to Colborne, I mysteriously somehow didn’t need to check in with one. It was how I was able to leave the state of Illinois in the first place. 

“No,” Alexander said. He held out a piece of paper with two addresses scribbled neatly on it. “Here. James’s address. Provided he hasn’t moved.”

“Has he moved?” I felt another knot of fear well in my throat. “What’s the second one?” 

“Where he works. He hasn’t picked up the last few times I tried calling, but I haven’t tried ringing him at the office.” Alexander looked away from me again. “Anyway, see you around, Oliver.” 

I could have flown into Logan airport from Philadelphia straight, and then made a beeline for Gloucester, but I drove instead. Gloucester. I looked it up on my phone, which could, remarkably, access the Internet although somewhat slowly. Clearly, the world had moved at breakneck speed while I was away from it. Gloucester was a coastal town, reliant on tourism, there were a number of museums, and its population held steady at thirty thousand. 

At least it’d be a living tomb. Crawling with people. 

Of course, I was desperate and driven to find James. But I was also afraid of what I might find. As long as he existed only in my mind and in the letter, then I could think the best of him and never know different. 

I went to see Leah in Boston. My sister had just turned twenty-six and worked in broadcast radio. Her roommate answered the door and said she was out, but added after looking me up and down and deciding that I clearly didn’t look like a crazed serial killer that I was welcome to sit and wait. 

“Oliver?” 

Leah dropped her things -- heavy winter coat, bags of shopping - the moment she saw me and nearly bowed me over with the force of her hug. As her arms tightened around me I had visions of James recoiling away from me in perhaps a similar circumstance. 

I had a million things I wanted to say to her. Mostly, I wanted to apologize for abandoning her that one Christmas. But then I decided not to. 

She insisted on feeding me lunch before I set off again. “Gloucester is...well, it’s a place. It’s not far from here. You could probably book it there under an hour.” 

“James lives there,” I said, anticipating her next question. The more I said his name, the more he filled out in his specter self in my head and became more of a real human being. “Works there too.” 

“James,” Leah had to think. Then she seemed to remember. “Oh. You think that’s a good idea?” 

“It’s probably a stupid idea,” I conceded. Leah and I could probably talk more to each other now. We were the same sort of people. We didn't like trouble. Kind of. 

Leah was right. It took me a little under an hour to drive into Gloucester proper and the streets were dotted with a few lone post-holiday shoppers. Christmas had just passed and I was forced to agree that Alexander might have a point. 

Still, I drove by James’s place of work. It turned out to be a law firm. Valance, Mulholland, and Donskis. They also seemed to be open, but operating on reduced hours. 

I walked in, and the receptionist hastily tucked away her salad that she was eating. “Can I help you?” 

“Um,” I said. Acutely, I felt like I was forgetting my lines, again. “Does James Farrow work here?” 

She said, “I’m sorry, who are you?” 

“My name is Oliver,” I said. I didn’t give out my last name. Tens of hundreds of murders have probably occurred since I was sent away for mine, and if you want to get really technical, I had mitigating circumstances on my side. Extreme emotional disturbance. So, not really murder at all. Small fry. 

“I’m a friend of James’s,” I added, smiling, as if that was going to make things better. 

“You’re in luck,” the receptionist said. “He’s in today.” Beeping an intercom, she spoke into it, “James? It’s Kaya from reception. There’s an Oliver to see you? Says he’s a friend of yours.” 

A voice, that I hadn’t heard for six years, said, “I’ll be right out.” It didn’t sound an iota like the voice I had lived with for so long in my head. 

James came out to meet me. A version of him did, anyway. We stared at each other as if we were simultaneously willing each other into existence. My throat felt dry and when I opened my mouth, no sound came out. I coughed. James tugged at his tie.

James’s eyes slid suspiciously towards Kaya behind us; she’d resumed eating her salad, but she was probably listening. He said, “I could use a smoke. Come outside with me.” 

I’d never figured James for a smoker. But then I’d thought he was dead. I’d take smoking over that any day. Still, it was strange, watching him shake out a cigarette from a pack, and he clicked a lighter, inhaled. **SMOKING KILLS** glared at me for a second before the words disappeared from my line of sight once more. 

While James was busy with all that, I studied him out of the corner of my eye. His hair was thinner, and the youthful sullenness in his eyes, the weight that had given him so much gravitas and presence, the same gravitas that had so arrested me now seemed unbearable on his shoulders. 

He caught me looking. “Want one?” 

I hedged, “Maybe a drag of yours.” 

James hesitated, and then handed over his cigarette. The filter was slightly wet from his spit. I handed it back after a second or two. 

“Did you get my note?” 

“Yeah. I have it in my pocket.” I was careful when I got it out and handed it to him. He unfolded it, scanned its contents and then folded it again. He traced the edge of the paper with his fingers and didn’t bother handing it back to me. 

Then he stood and pocketed the note after he’d reached the end of his cigarette. James stared at me like he wanted to touch me and I held my breath. “I have to go back to work. I get out at five-thirty.” 

I said, “I’ll be here.” 

At five-thirty exactly, I stood outside Valance, Mulholland, and Donskis in the biting cold. I didn’t mind. It woke me up. The air smelled like the nearby sea. Then James emerged, seemingly in the middle of putting on his coat, as if he was in a hurry to get somewhere. He slowed when he spotted me, and suggested we get a drink. I agreed, falling into step beside him. 

Given the way my life went, I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with lawyers myself. At the very least, I knew that no one valued their time like those people and no self-respecting lawyer worked through the holidays.

“I’m not a lawyer,” James corrected me when I asked him about it in earnest. “Only a paralegal. They keep making noises about sending me to law school on the firm’s dime. Everyone says I present well. I already have so much work to do.” 

Back at Dellecher, all it took was James’s presence to quiet and captivate an audience. He didn’t exactly have power, or height, or an assured air of mysterioso that had been Alexander’s staple, but he had everything I didn’t. 

“You do,” I said, without thinking. Then, “God, James. It’s so fucking good to see you.” I wasn’t really thinking when I said that either. 

James still didn’t look at me. 

The bar we were in was miles away from the Bore’s Head. It was one of those fancy bars that was meant to attract working professionals or tourists. But the young woman at the bar seemed to know James and greeted him by name when we ordered. He got my drink. 

“Here’s your note back,” he said, once we were seated again. James slid the square of paper back to me across the table. “I didn’t even realize I’d taken it with me. Sorry.” 

“I don’t want it back,” I said. “For you know, fairly obvious reasons.” 

Maybe that was why James lived within a stone’s throw of the sea. It was something that crossed my mind, and now the thought was blaring itself loudly anew in my frontal cortex. It was all I could think about. 

James, with his lips pressed determinedly against his glass of Shiraz: ” _A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come_.”

 _Julius Caesar_ , I thought, recognizing the quotation almost immediately. 

“But,” James continues, as his gaze continues to avoid mine. “I’ve made a good go of the other thing, don’t you think? _Let's kill all the lawyers_ , and all that.” 

“But you’re a paralegal,” I said.

“Exactly.” 

“I’m surprised you found me,” said James, later, when I’d followed him home. Home to James, was an apartment above an optometrist's practice off on a side street; he told me as we were making our way up a flight of steep, narrow stairs, that he could see the sea from his bedroom. Unlike Alexander’s house, which looked lived in and unapologetic, James’s place was more akin to an actual tomb. Spartan, cold. Like he could disappear from it at any time without consequence. 

(Like he didn’t want to live, but I didn’t give that too much thought, not with the man in front of me.)

I asked, “Did you think I wouldn’t?” 

“Not before I worked up the courage,” James turned on the light as soon as we stepped inside. He took off his coat, checked the thermostat, and toed off his polished shoes. I thought they were Oxfords. Following his lead, I took off my shoes too. “I’m getting a bit closer every day.” 

“Please stop talking like that,” I said. “I’m here now.” 

James laughed. Short, cutting, the sound rang in the room, like a gong suddenly muffled and stopped short. “I thought you’d be too mad to. When I stopped coming to see you in prison.” 

“I don’t know if mad’s the word.” I told him. “Unless you mean crazy. I think you did drive me crazy for a while.” Because it was my habit, because it was how I was taught, I grappled for Shakespeare. It was not what I expected to find, but I found _The Tempest_. 

Me: “ _Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service_.”

James: silence.

Then, me again, in my own voice, in my own words, naked and alien, hesitant: “...You know I could never stay angry at you, James.”

James looked like he wanted to say something, but the Bard failed him in this crucial moment. Instead, he mumbled something about needing to use the bathroom. The ball was in his court now, proverbially speaking. He could have asked me if I loved him, and I would have had only one answer for him. 

I spent four nights on James’s sofa, after that. It hardly felt like any time at all. 

“Come sleep in the bed with me,” James said. “That sofa will do your back in if you spend another night on it. Plus, it smells. I should try to be a better host.” 

I stirred, half asleep. It was New Year’s Eve. James and I were still finding words around each other. He worked half days at the law office and I stared at the sea from his apartment. Sometimes I went out for lunch at a nearby cafe, but I never went by the office again. I told myself that I didn’t want to make his life any more difficult; besides, we could continue not speaking to each other in the evenings. 

I said, “What?” 

James’s hair was mussed and he looked like he’d just woken up, too. I thought about how he must have woken up, and missed me. Then he came out of the warm cocoon of his bed and entered the living room to find me. 

“Come sleep in the bed with me, Oliver,” James said again. “If you want.” 

His words pulled me to him almost effortlessly. I had to admit, James’s sofa wasn’t the most comfortable, and I was developing a crick in my neck. But I’d since had some practice in sleeping in uncomfortable places and spaces. I didn’t think I would have even noticed, otherwise. 

“I’m,” I started. “Yeah, I guess I want to.” Just like I never could manage to stay angry at James for long, I also couldn’t bear to argue with him. It was not far from the worn sofa to his bedroom, but I felt every step of it, the cold floorboards prickling underneath my feet. 

It seemed like another lifetime ago that James and I used to be roommates up in the attic room. Sometimes we’d even swap beds for the hell of it. But we couldn’t have told you why.

James’s bedroom was warmer than the rest of the apartment, but not by much. He got in on what I assumed was his usual side of the bed, the side that was away from the window where he could look out towards the sea. "Well, come on."

I got into bed next to him. I was profoundly reminded of the time we shared my bed in Ohio, when it was Thanksgiving. We knew nothing then. Now we knew everything, too much. 

James’s fingers curled around mine, squeezing so tightly that I could feel the blood getting cut off from from my fingers. 

_The greater cantle of the world is lost_  
_With very ignorance. We have kissed away_  
_Kingdoms and provinces._

I said, “Is it after midnight?” 

James looked at me a bit sideways. “Yeah. It’s nearly one.” 

Outside, I couldn’t hear anything. Not even a single firework. “Not much for celebrating, Gloucester?” 

“Nope.” James’s mouth curled in the dark. “But Fourth of July. You should see this place, it’s a riot.” A long silence stretched between us after that. Uncomfortable and nearly pregnant. 

I ached to touch him. I’d say he filled my head in certain moments while I was incarcerated but that was too easy, vulgar. Finally, I managed, with my free hand, to touch James’s jaw, to run my fingers through his hair, and then I drew him to me. I pressed a kiss to his jaw, and then to his mouth, and I felt James sigh against me, as if he’d finally let a part of himself, the part that was the most guilty of all, out to sea. 

In the morning, I was afraid when James extricated from my arms and murmured that he was going to put on some coffee (“the coffeemaker takes a while,”) that he wasn’t going to come back and we were never going to speak honestly again. 

But I eventually got up after falling asleep for another ten minutes or so on James's side of the bed, surrounded by the warmth of his smell, to find him still there. He’d fixed coffee, some toast, and there was butter, jam, some sort of chocolate looking spread. 

“Sorry, it’s not much,” James said, not looking at me. But he did come up to me and kiss me. That made up for a lot of it, and made it much.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, breathless, “It’s a feast.” 

We ate in silence, and then when James got up to help himself to a refill, I heard him draw a sharp breath. “I wish you could be mad at me.” 

“I am perennially incapable,” I said, shrugging. “Sorry.” 

“I’m the one who should…” James’s shoulders tensed, perhaps, with _thinking makes it so_. Then he turned towards me again, said, “It’s going to be freezing out there. But will you come with me?” 

So we walked down to the beach. It didn’t take us long. James had his hand stuck deep in my left pocket. In his right hand, he clenched the note he’d written me, years and years ago. 

"I'd never like to throw words away," James spoke quietly, a bare few decibels above the water that was slowly filling my ears. "You're the same as me, Oliver. Don't you know what I mean?"

I assented, “I know what you mean.” 

We stood in front of the dark sea for something like hours; or no, that was just me dramatizing. It probably couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes, but it felt longer. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I moved to speak, but I tightened my grip around James's hand in my pocket, and he responded by moving closer to me, pressing in to my side. 

“Ready?” I said, very softly, too. It was difficult to keep my teeth from chattering. 

“Ready.” James nodded. He raised his right fist and threw the ball of paper into the water. It didn’t get far, but soon, the slow lapping waves swallowed it, and it was lost to us.

**Author's Note:**

> The Shakespeare quotes are from the following plays, in order: _Hamlet_ , _Julius Caesar_ , _Henry VI_ , _The Tempest_ , and _Antony and Cleopatra_. 
> 
> Huge thanks to Karios for the beta. :)


End file.
